


Le meilleur ami de l'homme, or Mabelle, un chiot (Man's best friend, or Mabelle, a puppy)

by twofrontteethstillcrooked



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Canon Era, Gen, M/M, Puppies, UST, friendship!, snippetfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-26
Updated: 2016-08-26
Packaged: 2018-08-11 05:27:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7878295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twofrontteethstillcrooked/pseuds/twofrontteethstillcrooked
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Is this the famous stolen whelp?" Enjolras asked. "She is very fine."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Le meilleur ami de l'homme, or Mabelle, un chiot (Man's best friend, or Mabelle, a puppy)

**Author's Note:**

> Bossuet being the little black dress of the Amis belongs to PilferingApples (and I heartily concur). Also, the idea of Grantaire stealing a puppy on the way to or from the cafe came from somewhere on tumblr -- if you know what post I'm talking about, please let me know and I'll link to it (my bookmarks fell into the ether :{ ). Many thanks, as always, to Clenster, for many things.

Bossuet marveled, very much to himself, how often he found himself making the not-entirely-unwelcome but nevertheless often surprising acquaintance of one of Grantaire's companions. This newest guest occupied space far closer to the floor than usual; she was rather more hirsute than the last grisette Grantaire had introduced, and had floppy little ears and big brown eyes.

"She looks like you," Bossuet said. "What's her name?"

Grantaire sat down by the hearth and the puppy ran over to take a bite of cooked quail from his fingertips. "I considered the usual, of course: Argos, Garm, Sirius, Cerberus. None quite sufficed."

"Not feminine enough?"

"Well, we mustn't be rude about it. What if she is a feisty guardian of the underworld in her innermost soul? Besides, there's always Laelaps. You see how she has not let a single crumb escape her detection." The puppy's tail wagged with such vigor, as if of its own accord, it nearly knocked its small owner off her furry feet. "But no, more than that, she just does not look like a mythical beast, does she?"

Bossuet considered this. The puppy was a muddy color, her fur sticking out fuzzily such that she somewhat mimicked a ball of dusty lint one might discover under one's furniture after a prolonged absence of housework. There were two patches of slightly lighter brown fur above her eyes, giving her a perpetually pleading countenance.

It was, Bossuet suspected, this expression that had played the largest role in Grantaire's recent, ahem, liberation of the dog from a back alley somewhere between Sceaux and his apartment near the Musain. That, and the drink, on the fumes of which Grantaire had probably floated homeward after a long night of dancing.

"That painting Jehan has at the end of his hallway -- he told me once it is of his childhood spaniel, Pruitt Tearlach Prouvaire, which strikes me as perhaps too much name for a single mild creature, not unlike references to hellhounds," Bossuet said. "You may better serve this canine with a modest name, such as Mabelle."

Grantaire gathered up the puppy against his chest and smoothed his hand over her head. She took the opportunity to lick at his palm. He asked her, "What do you think, Mabelle?" 

The puppy looked at Grantaire for a moment like she was mulling over the question with all deliberate concentration. Then she sneezed on him. He grinned at Bossuet and Bossuet grinned back. The puppy wiggled free and ran to Bossuet as if to thank him.

"A toast!" Grantaire said as Bossuet scratched Mabelle's ears. He rose and went to the kitchen, and came back with two mugs of wine.

Mabelle was trying to put her whole head in Bossuet's coat pocket when Grantaire thumped down beside Bossuet. She was persuaded to abandon her explorations as Grantaire produced another plate of quail, which constituted the largest amount of freshly prepared food Bossuet had ever encountered in Grantaire's home. With their backs to the sopha Bossuet and Grantaire clanked mugs and drank deeply. 

Mabelle, a magnanimous sort, shared her quail with them and in a jovial delirium attacked all four human ankle bones available to her. Thankfully, she was a nipper, not a biter.

______________________

"What if," Prouvaire began, eyes wide and a gladsome gasp in his voice, "she is a psychopomp, come to ferry you to a far distant shore?"

Bossuet covered his mouth with his napkin to remove any trace of crumb or cackle.

Grantaire and Mabelle, who was sitting on his lap and deigning to allow a bright red ribbon to be tied around her neck, both seemed to take offense to Prouvaire's suggestion, and offered him a glare. Bossuet took pains to suppress a chortle with a large bite of tart.

"Your insinuation that my dog will shortly accompany me out of this mortal coil into realms of blissful or blistering eternity is beneath you, Prouvaire. You know perfectly well I am in no immediate danger of departing this earthly cage, unlike those of you who daily seek to provoke your maker into rescinding his contract for your continuance," Grantaire said. 

Mabelle punctuated the sentiment with one of her tiny high-pitched barks.

"Then I repeat my initial assessment," Prouvaire said, cheer undiminished. "Your apartment is crawling with spirits, and we must consider it would be a great service if you would hold a ceremony to at least welcome them properly. Or," he said, smiling at the puppy, who had forgotten her gripe with him and was wagging her tail most beguilingly, "introduce yourself, since it may be more likely you have intruded upon them."

Grantaire took a drink of wine. Mabelle scratched at her new necklace and a plume of fur fluffed up into the air and landed delicately on the table; it was by far one of the less unsanitary substances to coat Grantaire's furniture. In lieu of weeping with laughter Bossuet helped himself to more tart.

______________________

"Attack!" Joly said.

Mabelle cocked her head and remained seated on Bossuet's lap.

Joly squatted down until he was closer to eye level with the puppy. He held out his piece of brie and waved it around. Mabelle tracked the movement and gave a small interested whine.

Joly smiled. "Attack!"

Mabelle cocked her head in the opposite direction. Joly hung his head in defeat and then ate the cheese.

"You are wasting your time," Grantaire said from the bar. "She is impervious to mandate or temptation, rather like myself."

Joly sniffed. "But she could be so helpful, if she wanted to be."

"Indeed, rather like her owner," Bossuet said, grinning at Grantaire, who bowed low in elegant form with a most mischievous smirk on his mouth--

And then snapped up to a more sober stance on Enjolras's appearance through the door. The Musain's back room had been deserted of other Amis for much of the evening, and it was unlike Enjolras to arrive unaccompanied at such a late hour. He nodded at Grantaire, who seemed stuck halfway between insolence and swoon -- and therefore struck mute with an afeared, half-sick expression plastered on his face -- and then at Bossuet and Joly.

"Is this the famous stolen whelp?" Enjolras asked. "She is very fine."

Bossuet put the puppy on the floor and she trotted over to sniff Enjolras's boots. "We have met with limited success indoctrinating her into Republican ideals."

Grantaire, unfrozen now, knelt to retie the ribbon circling his filched pet's neck. "I did not emancipate her from one dungeon only to have her lured into another." 

Mabelle consented to the adjustment of her fancy collar, then laid down and wiggled around until her fuzzy belly was rather wantonly exposed.

Bossuet and Joly watched, Bossuet's eyebrows lifting like kites and Joly's mouth agape, as Enjolras knelt too, and laid his whole hand upon that small furry stomach. Mabelle trilled with happiness. Grantaire, in perfect, rare accord, looked nothing short of bewitched.

"We would not deny her her liberty," Enjolras said, and Bossuet was given the distinct impression Enjolras was only with effort not making any sort of silly cooing noises at the pup.

Mabelle flipped herself into a standing position and pushed her face into Enjolras's hands to be petted properly: with all thoroughness and no skimping on the ear scritches. Enjolras obliged and Grantaire seemed to be experiencing something transcendent. Bossuet passed him the wine bottle; Grantaire took it blindly and drank like a man dying of thirst beneath inescapable sunlight.

Joly broke the last bit of brie into two chunks. He handed one to Bossuet. A knowing look passed between them as they chewed their cheese. Their sweetly oblivious friends remained kneeling, puppy lolling in their communal affections. 

______________________

First, Bossuet had assumed Mabelle would enjoy the morn's crisp air and warming breeze, since what manner of animal wouldn't benefit from these free gifts of nature? Paris was a splendor, green and yellow and shining with dew. Secondly, he thought single-stick would awaken Mabelle's keen canine instincts, that she would perk up at the mere sight of so many potential fetches.

Neither of these predictions came to pass: while Bahorel and Grantaire dueled on a grassy square in a rousing, good humored match, Mabelle stayed glum on Bossuet's lap, occasionally emitting only the smallest of whimpers.

"Is she well?" Bahorel asked. He had strolled over to the bench Bossuet had commandeered and was divesting himself of a cherry red waistcoat, much to the tittering thrills of ladies passing by.

"She ate heartily enough, and does not seem to be distressed by stomach pains or similar," Bossuet said, "but her energy is very low at present."

Grantaire came over then, swinging his ash baton. He wore signs of physical exertion less appealingly than Bahorel did, though it could not be denied the flush at his throat and his tousled curls were an improvement on a number of his more common deportments. At the nearer sight of him Mabelle perked up somewhat, raising her head and wagging her tail.

"Perhaps she is acutely myopic," Bahroel suggested. He rolled his shoulders in a way that somehow made him seem wider and therefore manlier. Bossuet heard a distinctly feminine gasp from somewhere behind his bench.

Grantaire handed off the baton and picked up the puppy, who did in fact seem far happier now that her master was close enough for a tongue bath. "You have been spending too much time with Combeferre," he told Bahorel. "Would you recommend a pair of spectacles for her?"

"This seems to be spectacle enough," Bahorel said with a broad smile. Mabelle had taken it upon herself to rid Grantaire of all traces of perspiration, dirt, and that tiny speck of blood derived from the shallowest of cuts on his upper cheekbone. "And just in time."

"Mrph?" Grantaire said, trying to repel Mabelle's most lascivious advances.

"Hello, Enjolras," Bahorel said, "what brings you to our humble street corner?"

Enjolras cleared his throat; Bossuet noted the slight pinking of his cheeks and the lack of books, papers, or other revolutionary accouterments upon his person. It was unlike Enjolras to be given over to wandering leisure, and yet that appeared to be exactly the case.

Bossuet stood up to greet their friend as well. "It is reassuring, somehow, to see that even you, one of our most conscientious comrades in arms, could not resist a constitutional on a morning as lovely as this."

"Ah," Enjolras said, "yes," and although Bossuet was certain he intended to say more Enjolras had stopped talking, perhaps a result of some eye-hand-puppy ataxia.

Mabelle had practically leapt into Enjolras's arms. Bahorel was suppressing such a large amount of delight Bossuet felt it would be a miracle if he did not burst an artery -- Bossuet was already imagining relaying this tale to Joly and the two of them breathless with laughter -- and Grantaire looked more surprised than when Bahorel had thumped him on the head with the baton.

"Good morning," Enjolras said to Mabelle in a composed tone of voice.

"I'm so sorry," Grantaire said, and though he did not actually sound very sorry, his hands were around Mabelle as he tried to reign in her enthusiasm.

"She is perfectly all right," Enjolras said.

Content in Enjolras's arms with her paws on his lapel, Mabelle looked back at Grantaire with a little pant, and Bossuet could have sworn she was making certain Grantaire saw how victoriously she had captured him a perfect specimen of delectable prey.

Bahorel caught Bossuet's eye. That neither of them began to howl nor cry was its own triumph.


End file.
